Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Singapore creates a government body to regulate lootboxes.
![[Deleted User]](https://images.v-cdn.net/banned_large.png)
[Deleted User]
Posts: 1,043
The user and all related content has been deleted.
Comments
For how many years have we been talking about that on here, well more than ten for sure. Before loot boxes MMOs had randomised purchases, its been with us for too long. Finally over only the last couple of years a few governments have woken up to this!
https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light
What children are exposed to is a parenting concern as is funding or denying any chance-based purchases they desire, along with protecting their own financial information so their decree can't be bypassed.
Should children be exposed to them it is an opportunity to teach them about what chance based purchases are and the pitfalls that can accompany them so that when they do have money to spend they will be forewarned.
This is just another thing on the parenting pile that isn't greatly dissimilar from any other caution on overspending when teaching children how to budget when they are about to become responsible for their own upkeep in life.
Often resisting a controlling central government gets you jailed to killed. Eagerness to surrender to such is often more that to endure through a hostile environment than an expression of true welcoming.
Saying no to lootboxes carries no such risks, making it a far easier choice to make.
One needn't go to Singapore. North America has plenty examples of government provided gambling in terms of lottery and scratch tickets.
My provincial government also operates casinos. Those these are accompanied by cautions and warnings, showing the government to be aware of their potential harm, they remain provided. They are regulated by the same body that controls alcohol sales despite the perils of alcoholism.
The same government also allows the sale of tobacco products despite their connection to cancer, while heavily taxing the sale of them such that at one time some smuggled these in from other provinces to resell them here and still undercut the local cost.
Our governments would be more inclined to find a way to tax lootbox sales than to end them, judging by their historical decisions on that potentially harmful.
While I don’t like big gov as I have gotten older I have realized that there are a lot of piece of sheit people in the world who care nothing about ethics (Blizzard for example), and these people care nothing about your children. While I fully grasp what is happening in games and can protect my child from them, I for example don’t understand chemistry and won’t be able to protect my child from contaminated water. Point being is sometimes parents need help because they don’t have the ability to understand the danger in front of them, this is where gov comes in.
In my opinion any cash shop present in a game needs to be regulated and I would create a tax for it to pay for that regulation. Any gambling mechanism introduced in a cash shop should be illegal. They don’t allow gambling, smoking or alcohol to be advertised and sold to kids in the main stream, why are they allowing gambling in video games?
I think there's a lot of room for such full disclosure regulations to improve the lootbox situation. Require companies that sell games with lootboxes to give a prominent, mandatory warning like this:
Warning: contains lootboxes
This game contains lootboxes, a gambling-like mechanism that asks players to pay real money for random rewards.
And then require companies to disclose the odds of getting various items from their lootboxes. Some countries already do this, and is has hardly been ruinous.
I'd also like to see games with lootboxes automatically having at least some minimum ESRB rating, at least if they get rated by the ESRB at all. Games with lootboxes should never be rated E for everyone. Make it at least T for teen, or maybe even a mandatory minimum rating of M for mature. Don't block their sale entirely, but do warn parents that they might not want their kids playing this.
The problem with regulations comes when they mandate that companies can't do something even though they want to do it and their customers want them to do it, or when regulations significantly increase the cost of doing whatever they were going to do. Not all regulations that do either of those things are bad, but regulations that do neither generally aren't much of a problem.
Regulations requiring honest disclosure of what is in a product are often a good thing. Think of it as being analogous to food labeling, which doesn't meaningfully affect the cost of making and selling food, but does allow potential customers trying to make healthy dietary decisions or avoid allergens to make informed decisions.
But the people have to pay for this governing body to monitor it......It's an expense that the people shouldnt have to pay.....
None, knowingly. The law prohibits it. When it comes to lootboxes the law leaves that to parental discretion. That is the primary difference between the two.
Adult competence in decision making is assumed under the law until it is established otherwise. This includes decisions made in matters of parental discretion.
There is no need for government to step in further.
There is a desire among some for them to do so.
That's a parenting issue. Parents that are ignorant about what they allow their children to do and what it involves are at fault regardless of other factors.
One doesn't need to be a technical wizard to notice in app and chance based purchases exist in a game. One need simply practice due diligence.
If Gen Z aren't responsible enough to be parents the government is going to have a lot more important things to focus on than lootbox regulation.
The only way parents would not be so aware is if they don't bother to check out what they are considering exposing their children to, which is a parenting issue no disclaimer will resolve no matter how mandatory.
No, that is not the primary difference. It's one of the big differences, true, but not the primary one. The primary difference is that gambling in videogames does not follow any general rules regulating the entire gambling industry, and established and enforced independently of the operators (i.e. game companies in this case). With a few notable exceptions, like Belgium and the Netherlands, where the local regulators have clearly said that those rules equally apply to the videogames and are enforcing them.
A particularly egregious problem with lootboxes and gambling in videogames in general is zero independent control of the mechanics. All traditional casinos are subject to regular technical inspections of their hardware for a number of purposes, e.g. to make sure they operate truly randomly (e.g. roulette-style games) or that they comply with the declared odds. So that a slot machine telling the players they have a 1 in 10 chance to hit the jackpot doesn't actually operate with a 1 in 1000 chance instead.
Gaming companies do not do that. They can manipulate their systems in any way they want and at any time they want, even while you are playing. There is zero independent oversight of what actually happens to guarantee that what you as a gambler are promised is happening actually is happening. This system in inherently bad and harmful, as the game companies profiting from the in-game gamblers have all the control over every aspect of the process, have every incentive to design and keep tweaking it to their advantage and to do so in a manipulative and exploitative way.
If you read the report on the EA, Activision and others published by the Belgian Gaming Commission (where the current restrictions originate), you will notice this as one of the major arguments to prosecute those companies under the local gambling laws. They flat out refused access of the BGC's inspectors to their systems to carry out technical audits of how they operate their in-game slot machines. Something that all the casinos are required by the law to comply with.
There are so many laws on physical toys. Why are games on phones ignored by our governments?
Parents who work 2 or 3 jobs don't even have time to look at the phone for messages let alone what games are on it. They may be completely ignorant and just look at the kiddie art style and be fooled that the game is safe for a child.
We must never assume everyone has our level of education or knowledge of games. What is common knowledge to you might not be to some harried parent holding 3 jobs with 5 kids.
So we punish these parents because to them putting food on the table is far more important than looking at what an innocuous looking game is doing to their children.
No ladies and gentlemen what we need is a legislation compelling these game companies to clearly label the loot boxes as gambling and to show the odds boldly. Why must you go out of your way to protect these predatory practices and excuse them so glibly while placing an unrealistic burden on that poor parent.